Nora wondered on her own side whether this scene had not been a little pre-arranged. For a day love and doubt fared in company. Lucinda’s mournful discourse on the morrow was not of a nature to restore her calmness. “Last night,” said Roger’s nurse, “he was very bad. He woke up out of his stupor, but he was none the better for that. He talked all night about you. If he murmurs a word, it’s always your name. He asked a dozen times if you had arrived, and forgot as often as I told him,—he, dear man, who used to remember the very hairs of your head. He kept wondering whether anything had happened to you. Late in the evening, when the carriages began to pass, he cried out that each of them was you, and what would you think of him for not coming to meet you? ‘Don’t tell her how bad I am,’ he says; ‘I must have been in bed two or three days, haven’t I, Lucinda? Say I shall be out to-morrow; that I have only a little cold. Hubert will do everything for her,’ he kept saying. And then when, at midnight, the wind began to blow, he declared it was a storm, that your ship was on the coast. God keep you safe, he cried. Then he asked if you were changed and grown; were you pretty, were you tall, should he know you? And he took the hand-glass and looked at himself and wondered if you would know him. He cried out that he was ugly, he was horrible, you would hate him. He bade me bring him his dressing things so that he might make himself look better, and when I wouldn’t, he began to rage and call me names, and then he broke down and cried like a child.” Hearing these things, Nora prayed intently for Roger’s recovery,—prayed that he might live to see her more cunningly and lovingly his debtor. She wished to do something, she hardly knew what, not only to prove, but forever to commemorate, her devotion. She felt capable of erecting a monument of self-sacrifice. Her conscience was perfectly at rest. For a couple of days she saw nothing of Hubert. On the third there came excellent news of Roger, who had taken a marked turn for the better, and had passed the crisis. She had declined, for the evening, a certain attractive invitation; but on the receipt of these tidings she revoked her refusal. Coming down to the drawing-room with Mrs. Keith, dressed and shawled, she found Hubert in waiting, with a face which uttered bad news. Roger’s improvement had been momentary, a relapse had followed, and he was worse than ever. She tossed off her shawl with an energy not unnoted by her duenna. “Of course I cannot go,” she said. “It is neither possible nor proper.” Mrs. Keith would have given her biggest bracelet that this thing should not have happened in just this way; but she submitted with a good grace,—for a duenna. Hubert went down with her to her carriage. At the foot of the stairs she stopped, and while gathering up her skirts, “Mr. Lawrence,” she demanded, “are you going to remain here?”